Anderton Schultz looked back at Kent, his eyes wild. One of the contact lenses had slipped, with blue appearing like an eclipsed moon from behind the blood red. The latex appliances were coming off in spots, and hadn’t really been applied properly in the first place.

“Think about what you’re doing!” Kent cried. “You’re not well, Andy!”

“Cast the warm-bloods into the Caverns of Ice!” growled Schultz. “Cast the warm-bloods into the Caverns of Ice!”

“Stop saying that stupid line!” Kent snapped despite himself. “Andy, for shit’s sake, snap out of it!”

Even if Schultz’s hatred toward Kent hadn’t been laser-sharp and incandescent, he wouldn’t have heard a word. The movie had been made in 1990, and he’d been buried under makeup, but in light of his recent reversals, Schultz had realized that after fighting it for so long, it was time for an embrace.

With a gutteral growl, Schultz hefted Kent up over his head with both hands, using the strength that he’d used often in doing his own stunts. Upon seeing the inky abyss before him, concealing the canyon floor 100 feet down, Kent’s wheedling abruptly turned into frenzied, infantile shrieks.

“Cast…the warm-bloods…into..the Caverns of Ice!”

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“I have heard the two-legs talking,” purred the cat in a voice both soft and satisfied. “You are to be taken to a great pride-leader of theirs as a prize and curiosity.”

“It matters not,” replied the Huia male, gently rubbing his thick beak against the dark plumage of his mate, “as long as we are together.”

“Oh, you will be,” said the cat, shifting her balance slightly as the ship bobbed amid light waves. “The two-legs will stuff you with sawdust and wires, side by side. I have heard of it from toms in port.”

“As long as we are together,” the female huia said. She cooed softly and returned her mate’s gesture with her long beak like a curved needle.”

“Bah, such mawkishness is no kind of sport,” snarled the cat. “No wonder your kind is rare enough to be a curiosity.” She turned to the next cage in the ship’s hold. “What about you, owl?” she said. “How does it feel to be among the last of your kind, taken from your home to be stuffed by a pride of two-legs?”

“Ah..ahah..AHAHAHAHAHA!” one of the owls cackled. “Hehehehe…you want to have a bit of sport with us, two-legs, is that it? Maybe agree to, heh, open our cages and let you end our misery early? AHAHAHAHA!”

“And why not?” said the cat, speaking the patois common to predators in a low and mewling voice. “A quick snap…I would do it clean. You’d die a warrior’s death. Who knows, you and your queen there might even best me and fly away to safety.”

“Ahahaha…AHAHAHA!” cackled the female laughing owl. “We’ve heard things as well, you know. There was a sort of…ahahaha…little bird that once lived not far from where we did. Killed by cats they were, all of them! And do you know what the two-legs did in return? They killed the cats, all of them!” The owls chortled together.

“So…ahaha…so you see, cat, we may be bound for a stuffing, but you’re surely not” the male cackled. “Eat one feather of ours or our amorous fellow-passengers and the two-legs will snuff you out like a blind cricket!”

The cat hissed and snarled in return. But, recognizing the futility of the gesture, it turned and sulked out of sight.

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“See? All of them gone.” Caleb Barnet, the cemetery caretaker, was an odd sort with a vaguely singsong diction and a long-running, long-joked-about conflict of interest since he was the younger of the two sons of old Ethel Mae Barnet who ran Barnet Funeral Home over on East Schloss St.

Deerton PD Officer Mike Overhauser had responded to plenty of Caleb’s calls before. Usually it was something about teenagers in the cemetery walking over his fine crosscut grass or littering, and he’d been known to call the fuzz when one of the kids he hired for odd jobs over the summer looked at him funny. A lot of the guys in the city police looked at Caleb Barnet’s calls as a good excuse to pick up some coffee at Easton’s Gas.

And then there was this.

“Any idea who might have wanted to take them?” Mike bent over a grave to examine it closely. The gentleman six feet south, all dressed up with nowhere to go, was one Jared Matthews. As noted on his tombstone, he’d died in Korea circa 1952 and by rights there ought to have been a little steel holder in the ground with an American flag and a slot for flowers. Instead, the flag and flowers had been placed on the ground on either side of an empty hole.

“It’s those damned teenagers again,” Caleb said in his distinctive diction. “Pulling them up and selling them for scrap to get money for meth and dope.”

Mike pulled on a latex glove and examined the flag and flowers–one of many scattered about a burial field completely denuded of steel holders. “It’s just cheap pressed steel,” he said. “Worth less than a penny each in scrap. All the money’s in copper and stuff like that.”

“Then they’re making shivs out of them, or using them as crack pipes,” insisted Caleb. “I tell you officer, it’s those goddamned kids, with too many horror movies and not enough respect for the dead!”

“Maybe,” said Mike, unconvinced. “I’ll dust these for prints and we’ll do some drive-bys tonight.”

Over Caleb’s protestations that dusting and drive-bys weren’t enough, Mike bagged the evidence and returned to his squad car to call in the report. Caleb stalked back to the cemetery maintenance shed in response, muttering darkly.

Not far away, the stolen steel flag holders were arranged in a complex geometric pattern on the ground about their thief, close enough to be seen but missed by both caretaker and cop.

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“Yes, it is what it appears to be: a copy of the Mstumpuan, transcribed into Latin by João of Amareleja shortly before he was buried up to his elbows and stoned to death by the Segumbi.” Carlos examined the book reverently, holding it at arm’s length both to read it through his glasses and to keep the tropical steam of his breath away from it.

“What would they do if they knew we had it?” Annabelle said. “The Segumbi.”

“I imagine that many would not care,” Carlos laughed. “But those who still follow the paramount chief, those in the hinterlands…it is probable that they would show us the same hospitality why showed João of Amareleja.”

Annabelle exhaled sharply. “Not exactly what I have in mind when I want to get stoned. Why would they care so much?”

“You have to realize that the Quri have become the boogeymen of Segumbi legend, distant and demonic legends, and the Mstumpuan is their blasphemous liturgy,” said Carlos. “It would be like bringing a book on Satanism into the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Or a self-professed terrorist in Times Square.”

“Yes,” said Carlos. “A knee-jerk reaction of the cultural DNA, one might say.”

“What about the Quri themselves?” said Annabelle, cautiously. “Wouldn’t they be more helpful?”

“They were conquered nearly a thousand years ago by the Segumbi; if there are any of their line left, by now they’d be indistinguishable. But that’s not why we can’t let a word of this escape to the Segumbi or anybody.”

“Why’s that?”

“The same thing it always is. Treasure.”

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sween

(plural sweens)

Pronunciation

(Brit) enPR: nûkl, IPA: /ˈswɪn/
(US) enPR: nûrkl, IPA: /swiːn/

Definition (Noun)

1. A person who is perceived as greatly attractive only by those who are too young, naive, or foolish to know better (informal, always derogatory).

Look at her, she’s such a sween since all the guys love her just because she rides a motorcycle and does drugs.

2. A person attempting to make themselves attractive by adopting the superficial mannerisms of a sween (slang, always derogatory).

John is such a sween, pretending to be all dangerous with that leather jacket and rub-on tattoo.

Definition (Verb)

1. The act of being attracted to someone or something that only a young, naive, or inexperienced person would be attracted to (informal, always derogatory).

Look at those stupid kids, sweening over that tattooed guy in the prison bus.

Etymology

Unknown. Attested since 1961 as slang. Folk etymologies often refer to a person with the surname or nickname “Sween,” perhaps from “Sweeney,” who was an object of affection for many despite leading all admirers inevitable to ruin. If true, could be supportive of UK origin. The initialism “some women easily entranced now” or variants is almost certainly a backronym.

This entry incorporates some text from Wiktionary and as such this entry is licensed under the same Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported GNU Free Documentation licenses. This license and attribution does not in any way suggest that the original authors and/or editors endorse this entry or its use of the work.

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Excerpted from the Ruins & Rogues Creature Compendium, incorporating materials from the Sorcerers & Sabers Interverse Guide

Meth Zombie
Size: M
Hit Dice: 3d13+5
Treasure: Class X
Armor Class: Developmental
Attacks: +2 (claws), +2 (jaws), Special (addiction)

In the turmoil among the Interversal Continuums brought about by the industrial revolution and the Age of Addiction, the continuums relating to basic elements rapidly proliferated as the Old Continuums broke up and new ones formed from the debris. Among the most recent new elemental continuums is the Interversal Continuum of Amphetamines, formed from broken shards of the Interversal Continuum of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the Interversal Continuum of Explosions.

Meth Zombies are the most common denizens of the Interversal Continuum of Amphetamines, generally created elsewhere and then brought to serve their masters beyond the veil of the Prime World. Dull-eyed and shuffling, with rotten features and a nauseating stench, the Meth Zombies instinctively attack all other creatures on sight. They can be commanded and given simple directions by interversal beings from their continuum at the level of Meth Lord or higher, though. They attacks with simple but powerful clawing and biting, but each attack carries a 2% chance of inflicting Addiction on their target.

Addicted targets will single-mindedly seek out and consume crystals of methamphetamine, often by attacking the crystallized rind that covers portions of the zombies’ bodies. They will continue to consume until they perish of heart failure, after which they will rise as a Meth Zombie in 6-8 hours.

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Ten – The gentle father figure of the group. He watches over the family from a firm position of authority, but is often on the patriarchal side and can be condescending. He’s often accused of favoring Five, and his close relationship with One Hundred and his popularity in general leads to some affluenza on his part–Ten is often blind to the problems of other numbers or dismissive of them.

Nine – Jealous and scheming, Nine openly covets Ten’s position. She is energetic and bold, often enlisting Eighteen and Twenty-Seven in her schemes, but often fails to realize how toxic her desire to supplant Ten really is to the others. She is always quick to point (and harp on) out the relatively rare instances in popular culture where she is prominent, and penned a long and fawning letter to J.R.R. Tolkien because of it. She is also keenly aware that she is the only non-prime odd in the first ten, which feeds her sense of inadequacy even more.

Eight – Eight is Ten’s unofficial second-in-command, a position formally accorded to Nine but rarely acted upon because of the latter’s jealousy. This has caused a rift and much animosity between the two, which pains Eight, but he sees his duty to support Ten as paramount. Eight is also a mentor for Four and Two to a much greater extent than Ten, who prefers to remain aloof. He and Five are close, though Five cares more for organization for its own sake than loyalty, and Eight is quietly aggrieved by the seemingly unearned favoritism Ten shows Five.

Seven – Happy-go-lucky and without a care in the world, Seven trusts to luck rather than skill and doesn’t concern herself with personal advancement or worry about setbacks. This easy personability, and the esteem with which she is held by gamblers, causes her more uptight neighbors considerable consternation. Officially the leader of the Prime Club, Seven is content to delegate the real work to Five in favor of a life of leisure and luck. The more fastidious numbers are consistently irritated by this outlook and Seven’s easy relationship with the popular Twenty-One and Forty-Nine.

Six – Six is matronly and motherly, often doing her best to smother the others, especially Three and Two, in adulation. This causes some friction between her and some of her more practical neighbors, who see her as mollycoddling and intrusive, but Six is simply compelled to love and care for the others as best she can. She is deeply enamored of Ten, who remains (willfully or not) oblivious to her affections.

Five – Five is fastidious and detail-oriented, a born technocrat and firm believer in a regimented lifestyle. This attitude is often misunderstood as bossiness by Seven and Nine, but Five simply prefers a businesslike relationship to the world. She is exasperated by disorder and messiness, and is the unofficial leader of the Prime Club because of this. Fifteen and especially Twenty-Five often aid her in attempts to bring order to chaos.

Four – Much as Eight is Ten’s shadow and lieutenant, Four is inseparable from Five in the latter’s quest for order, structure, and organization. Four would deny it, and Five is oblivious to it, but there is a strong romantic undercurrent to this service. Four does his best to communicate Five’s schemes to the others and make her unreasonable demands reasonable, but often fails and is disparaged as a toady or lackey on top of that. Banned from Prime Club meetings, he often resorts to sneaky trick to try and infiltrate their meetings, usually without any success.

Three and Two – Three and Two are romantically linked to an extent that many of their neighbors find unhealthy and showy, constantly mooning over each other with grandiose declarations of devotion and extravagant gifts. Their every move is taken jointly as a statement of high drama, and their constant breakups, reconciliations, and attempts to make the other jealous are a constant source of annoyance. They have taken One under their wing and are often blamed for enabling the latter’s learned helplessness and other problems. Secretly, Three and Two fear that they are not ultimately as compatible or in love as they claim, which is a constant source of annoyance to everyone except One, Six, and Ten.

One – Immature and infantile, One has difficulty breaking out of the comfortable pattern of being the baby and mollycoddled. She’s well-liked by the others, but is often exasperating in her refusal to take any responsibility seriously and the lengths to which the others often have to go in order to make up for her lack of engagement and preference for having others do work. She participates in the Prime Club despite not officially being a member, which the Primes resent, but they find it easier to just let her in than to listen to her constant whining.

Zero – A mysterious figure, Zero comes and goes as he pleases and prefers not to talk or engage with any of the others. His air of detachment conceals a deep need to be accepted and an intense feeling of inadequacy, which he tries to offset by putting on airs. His unnerving ability to sneak around has earned him the enmity of more skittish neighbors, but he has the support of the powerful 100 and the even more mysterious i and e.

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NBS Broadcasting and NBS Sports is proud to present this week’s Tom Hicks and Carl Drake “Underdog of the Moment” award to the University of Northern Mississippi’s Fighting Abolitionists. Fresh off their 31-30 defeat of the Southern Michigan University Fighting Grizzlies, the Abs are up against the #2 ranked State University of Arkansas Devastating Tornadoes.

Drake had this to say about the pick: “While the ‘Does smashed their last opponent, Arkansas State, 97-2, I feel that the Abs have a fighting chance against the larger, better-funded, and more popular school. Why? Because the season is looking like a dull-as-ditchwater arms race between the schools with the biggest pocketbooks right now, and predicting unlikely upsets is as close to some real suspense as we’re likely to get.”

Hicks added that “Northern Mississippi hasn’t beaten a nationally ranked school since 1910, but the fans here have never given up hope, and it’s that do-or-die, giving 110%, hustle, and follow-through that ekes them out a special place among the sacrificial opponents the ‘Does have lined up to preserve their strength and sharpen their teeth before the inevitable bowl game.”

SUOA ‘Does coach Howard Gristle said of the award: “We’re looking forward to playing a team with gumption, and I guarantee that my boys will face a tough battle to be courteous as they pick the Abs out of their teeth, but I am confident that they have the hustle and follow-through to pull it off.”

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Theodore Marlowe, internationally known for his novel The Secret Whisperers, which was shortlisted for a Nobel Prize, and whose Silent Forests of the Soul was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film, is buried in the churchyard of Our Lady of St. Clair in Detroit, not far from where he died in 1980. The church has been boarded up since 1985, and much of the surrounding cityscape has succumbed to urban blight and is abandoned or giving way to prairie.

Alone among the graves, though, Marlowe’s is kept tended. Twice a year, around his birthday in April and his deathday in September, his grave is quietly cleaned and restored with a bouquet of wild daisies–familiar to readers of The Secret Whisperers, naturally–and a bottle of Marlowe’s favorite Kentucky brandy with two snifters and a note. After a Detroit Democrat-Picayune story on the practice in 1995, a small crowd has gathered at each sighting of the mysterious custodian.

Volunteer DPD officers keep onlookers from interfering with the ritual, which is performed by a person of indeterminate characteristics in a dark hooded jacket and balaclava. As far as is known, the mystery person performed the ritual twice yearly without interruption for 34 years.

Until 2014, when they failed to appear in either April or September.

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Highcliff Island (its name a calque of the original Portuguese Ilha das altas falésias as recorded by João da Nova) is an extinct volcano in the southern Indian Ocean, approximately halfway between the Prince Edward Islands and Kerguelen. While it has been known and noted on nautical charts for centuries, Highcliff holds the unique distinction among remote islands of never having been explored.

This is primarily due to its geology; the ancient volcano caldara formed in such a way that the island takes the form of am irregular bowl with 1000-1500 feet of sheer rock cliffs surrounding it, sloping down nearly vertically to the sea. The high cliffs of its name, in other words. Several expeditions failed to penetrate its interior before the island’s owner, France, declared it to be a nature preserve (using the name île Highcliff and leaving the calque untranslated rather than substituting the French île des hautes falaises). Access was prohibited for fear of introducing invasive species, which had devestated the native insular fauna on many other isolated landmasses.

Nevertheless, illegal attempts continue to be made to access Highcliff, for one reason and one reason only: a message carved on the timbers of an icebound ship, indicating that the crew planned to make for Highcliff in the ship’s boats.

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